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RBG and My Trump Loving Brother
How I survived the death from pancreatic cancer of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and my conservative brother less than 24 hours apart.
“So..” my brother said on the phone with a pregnant pause after ten minutes of catching up chit chat. “The doctors found a tumor and it looks like pancreatic cancer.”
Honestly I don’t remember much of what he said after that but I do remember how the conversation ended. “Look Mary, I intend to beat this. If that crazy woman Ruth Bader Gingsburg can keep going so can I. She’s had it how long now and keeps working to destroy our country? If she can beat it so can I.”
Turns out neither of them could beat it. At least not forever. RBG lived ten years post diagnosis. My brother just over two months.
To say my brother and I disagreed politically is a bit of an understatement. Previous to the Trump administration I could enjoy long political discussions with him, passionate debate on any topic being one of the primary sources of entertainment in our large family growing up. But Trump changed that, at least for me. It hurt too much. It felt too personal.
Which isn’t to say that we never talked politics in the past four years. We did. But I no longer enjoyed those conversations. I walked away…
